


Hyperion at Dawn

by CertifiedPissWizard



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: F/F, Gen, also, but still in space, i might add on later who knows alskdfjawetgasd, juno centric, rita: you know that feeling when your best friend is a city, theres tender reunion vesbud, to my surprise and nobody elses, vague magical realism vibes, we got that split pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27514321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CertifiedPissWizard/pseuds/CertifiedPissWizard
Summary: That’s just what cities do. Once you get attached to somewhere, or someone... you can’t break apart without leaving some of yourself behind.- Buddy Aurinko, Juno Steel and the Time Gone By part 1
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko & Juno Steel, Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay, Rita & Juno Steel
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Hyperion at Dawn

Something that Rita will never ever say is that sometimes when she looks at Mistah Steel she sees she sees streets instead buildings the dome the floating mansions the people living their lives. Sometimes, when he’s talking real quiet like she can hear the sounds of people talking over him, the sort of words one would say in a hotel if they were on some sort of forbidden love rendezvous, like Love in the Venusian Rain Part 6. He’s still Mistah Steel, of course. It’s just sometimes he’s a whole lot more than that a city and people and traffic and all that rolled into one person. His moods tend to track with what’s going on in the city more often than not so Rita keeps up on the newsfeeds to try and help and she isn’t really sure if what happens in Hyperion is because of his moods or viceversa but that’s just how Boss is, and that’s that on that.

Franny thinks it’s ridiculous when Rita says stuff like that, but Franny’s never had to look into Mistah Steel’s eyes when he goes all distant like, stuck in some mental monologue with his eyes glowing with the letters of the neon lights half way across town. Sometimes he ain’t just Mistah Steel, or maybe he’s always not just Mistah Steel and it’s only visible sometimes. She doesn’t think he knows. She isn’t going to be the one to say something.

He ends up disappearing for a month after all that business with Vicky, and Hyperion gets all sad and droopy and painful and the lights blow out and Rita knows somethings wrong but she doesn’t know how to say it and she can’t find him. Then he’s back and missing an eye and sad in that dramatic way where he talked himself out of something good and he looks up at the stars walking to some of the movie nights at her house and she thinks she knows why and she hates it and then they watch the 64 Headed Sharktapus and Mistah Steel throws popcorn at the screen and calls it trash and Rita agrees but she ain’t going to say anything because it’s the point of the matter.

The city starts perking up a lot when he takes that job for Mistah Ramses and then it. It goes up and down an awful lot and sometimes the people just get real weird. Then he disappears again and Newtown and things get worse and better and worse until Rita isn’t sure which is which and Mistah Steel is back and the towers are gone and Rita drags Boss to a stream night and when he wakes up the city does too. Dawn comes a couple hours early.

The city heals overnight almost but Mistah Steel is different too and he hugs Rita and Mistah Mercury and probably would hug Agent Wire but she isn’t there and-

Space is big. It’s big and black and there are so many stars and planets and Rita still checks the Hyperion news feeds and the city wilts in Mistah Steel’s absence, following his moods but only a little, and what’s Rita supposed to do let Hyperion flounder or drag Mistah Steel back when he’s smiling again and- Maybe the best thing to do is to not say anything she thinks because Mistah Jet makes some tea that Mistah Steel doesn’t drink and Miss Vespa threatens Boss and Captain Mom breaks it up and Mistah Nureyev-Ransom watches and softens a little. Ol’ Rita can keep a few more secrets.

* * *

When Buddy sees Juno for the first time she just knows. She’s seen that je ne sais quoi in her Vespa, and she’s seen that same thing staring out of her mirror. Sometimes, maybe it’s the place that gets it hooks into you, or it’s you that gets your hooks into the place. It follows along with you, is the thing. It’s a mirror of you and you of it. The Lighthouse wilts when she isn’t near it, even then it’s still missing Vespa, wilting a little in her absence. In those first days free without her, she felt wilted too.

She means it, when she tells Juno that, “That’s just what cities do. Once you get attached to somewhere, or someone... you can’t break apart without leaving some of yourself behind.” She’s attached to the Lighthouse, and for all she can glow and shine and shimmer away from it there’s still that missing part, aching like a wound. Well, to be fair, there are two missing parts, but she ignores the Vespa shaped one because there’s nothing to do for it.

Of course, then Juno helps bring her Vespa home, and she rings with it or the Lighthouse rings with it or Vespa rings with it and for a moment they’re all the same thing. The light never glowed brighter, and she can almost feel the structure patching over or maybe that’s the holes in her heart.

Before Juno is well enough to head back to that city that is and isn’t him she tells him. He looks at her like he doesn’t know what to say. “I think I knew.” That’s all he says, and that’s better than she expected to hear. She thought she’d hear the sort of begging disbelief she felt when she realized. There’s something almost horrifying in that easy acceptance, a sadness to it, and she gets the feeling that she doesn’t overly want to know why, for all she wants to interrogate him on this.

“It doesn’t mean you’re trapped, darling. It just means you have a few more ties than anyone else.” He looks at her, and she can see his city through him. Ties like that are tight and hard to shake, she knows. Jet ripped her away from the Lighthouse before she could die here. Nobody is going to do that to Juno, so what she does, before sending him back to his city, is gives him a way out. “Juno.” He looks at her and nods. She doesn’t know what she was going to say, a rarity, but what ever it was, at least she can be sure that Juno understands it.


End file.
